Chadic languages

Last updated
Chadic
Geographic
distribution
Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon
Linguistic classification Afro-Asiatic
  • Chadic
Proto-language Proto-Chadic
Subdivisions
ISO 639-5 cdc
Glottolog chad1250
Chadic languages in Africa map.svg
Map of the distribution of the Chadic languages within Africa
Chadic languages map.svg
Detailed map of the distribution of Chadic languages in Western and Central Africa

The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 196 languages [1] spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, and northern Cameroon. By far the most widely spoken Chadic language is Hausa, a lingua franca of much of inland Eastern West Africa, particularly Niger and the northern half of Nigeria.

Contents

Composition

Paul Newman (1977) classified the languages into the four groups which have been accepted in all subsequent literature. Further subbranching, however, has not been as robust; Roger Blench (2006), for example, only accepts the A/B bifurcation of East Chadic. [2] Subsequent work by Joseph Lovestrand argues strongly that Kujarge is a valid member of East Chadic. The placing of Luri as a primary split of West Chadic is erroneous. Bernard Caron (2004) shows that this language is South Bauchi and part of the Polci cluster. A suggestion for including the language isolate Kujargé as an early-diverged member, which subsequently became influenced by East Chadic, has been made by Blench (2008). [3]

A chart of the Chadic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. Chadic Languages.jpg
A chart of the Chadic branch of the Afroasiatic languages.

Loanwords

Chadic languages contain many Nilo-Saharan loanwords from either the Songhay or Maban branches, pointing to early contact between Chadic and Nilo-Saharan speakers as Chadic was migrating west. [4]

Although Adamawa languages are spoken adjacently to Chadic languages, interaction between Chadic and Adamawa is limited. [5]

Pronouns

Pronouns in Proto-Chadic, as compared to pronouns in Proto-Afroasiatic (Vossen & Dimmendaal 2020:351): [6]

PronounProto-Chadic Proto-Afroasiatic
1*ní*i ~ *yi
2M*ka*ku, *ka
2F*ki(m)*kim
3M*nì*si, *isi
3F*ta
1PL*mun (incl.), *na (excl.)(*-na ~ *-nu ~ *-ni) ?
2PL*kun*kuuna
3PL*sun*su ~ *usu

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary in different Chadic branches listed in order from west to east, with reconstructions of other Afroasiatic branches also given for comparison:

Languageeyeearnosetoothtonguemouthbloodbonetreewatereatname
Proto-Chadic [7] *ydn*km/*ɬm*ntn*s₃n; *ƙ-d*ls₃-*bk*br*ƙs₃*ymn*hrɗ (hard); *twy (soft)*s₃m
Hausa [8] idokunnehancihaƙoriharshebakijiniƙashiitaci; bishiyaruwacisuna
Proto-Ron [9] *kumu**atin*haŋgor*liʃ*foɟɑ̄lɑ̄, tɾɔ̃̄*kaʃ*sum
Proto-South Bauchi [10] *(gwà)yìr(-ŋ)*kə̂m(-si)*bʸak(-ì)*bìràm*gu(ŋ)ul*pit-ə̀*(yì)sûm(-s₃)
Polci [11] yiirkəəmcinshenhaƙoribiiburan; bərangooloopətmaacisuŋ
Proto-Central Chadic [12] *hadaj; *tsɨʸ*ɬɨmɨɗʸ*hʷɨtsɨnʸ*ɬɨɗɨnʸ*ɗɨrɨnɨhʸ; *ɣanaɗʸ; *naɬɨj*maj*ɗiɬ; *kɨrakaɬʸ*hʷɨp*ɗɨjɨm*zɨm*ɬɨmɨɗʸ
Proto-Masa [13] *ir*hum*cin*s-*si*vun*vuzur*sok*gu*mb-*ti*sem
Kujarge [14] kunɟukumayo ~ kimekaatakiyaaliŋatiapaɪbɪrí(kaɟeɟa), kàyɛ́yakaʃíèʃia(tona), tuye [imp. sg.]; tuwona [imp. pl.]rúwà
Other Afroasiatic branches
Proto-Cushitic [15] *ʔil-*ʔisŋʷ-*ʔiɬkʷ-*caanrab-*ʔaf-/*yaf-*mikʷ’-; *moc’-*-aħm-/*-uħm-; *ɬaam-*sim-/*sum-
Proto-Maji [16] *ʔaːb*háːy*aːç’u*eːdu*uːs*inču*haːy*um
Tarifiyt Berber [17] ŧit’t’aməžžun, aməz’z’uɣŧinzāŧiɣməsŧiřəsaqəmmumiđamməniɣəssamanššisəm
Coptic iama'aješašol, najhelasrosnofkasšēnmouwōmran
Proto-Semitic [18] *ʕayn-*ʔuḏn-*ʔanp-*šinn-*lišān-*dam-*ʕaṯ̣m-*ʕiṣ̂-*mā̆y-*ʔ-k-l(*šim-)
Proto-Afroasiatic [19] *ʔǐl-*-ʔânxʷ-*sǐn-/*sǎn- 'tip, point'*-lis’- 'to lick'*âf-*dîm-/*dâm-*k’os-*ɣǎ*âm-; *akʷ’-*-mǎaʕ-; *-iit-; *-kʷ’-̌*sǔm-/*sǐm-

Bibliography

Data sets

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Afroasiatic languages</span> Large language family of Africa and West Asia

The Afroasiatic languages, also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic, are a language family of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel. Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo. Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cushitic languages</span> Branch of Afroasiatic native to East Africa

The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of 2012, the Cushitic languages with over one million speakers were Oromo, Somali, Beja, Afar, Hadiyya, Kambaata, and Sidama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nilo-Saharan languages</span> Proposed family of African languages

The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Omotic languages</span> Language family of Ethiopia and Sudan

The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region and southeastern Sudan in Blue Nile State. The Geʽez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others. They are fairly agglutinative and have complex tonal systems. The languages have around 7.9 million speakers. The group is generally classified as belonging to the Afroasiatic language family, but this is disputed by some linguists.

Ongota is a moribund language of southwest Ethiopia. UNESCO reported in 2012 that out of a total ethnic population of 115, only 12 elderly native speakers remained, the rest of their small village on the west bank of the Weito River having adopted the Tsamai language instead. The default word order is subject–object–verb. The classification of the language is obscure.

Christopher Ehret, who currently holds the position of Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, is an American scholar of African history and African historical linguistics particularly known for his efforts to correlate linguistic taxonomy and reconstruction with the archeological record. He has published ten books, most recently History and the Testimony of Language (2011) and A Dictionary of Sandawe (2012), the latter co-edited with his wife, Patricia Ehret. He has written around seventy scholarly articles on a wide range of historical, linguistic, and anthropological subjects. These works include monographic articles on Bantu subclassification; on internal reconstruction in Semitic; on the reconstruction of proto-Cushitic and proto-Eastern Cushitic; and, with Mohamed Nuuh Ali, on the classification of the Soomaali languages. He has also contributed to a number of encyclopedias on African topics and on world history.

The Kujargé language is spoken in seven villages in eastern Chad near Jebel Mirra, and in villages scattered along the lower Wadi Salih and Wadi Azum in Darfur, Sudan. It is estimated to have about 1,000 speakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nilotic languages</span> Small language family of East Africa

The Nilotic languages are a group of related languages spoken across a wide area between South Sudan and Tanzania by the Nilotic peoples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kuliak languages</span> Family of languages

The Kuliak languages, also called the Rub languages, are a group of languages spoken by small relict communities in the mountainous Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda.

The South Cushitic or Rift languages of Tanzania are a branch of the Cushitic languages. The most numerous is Iraqw, with half a million speakers. Scholars believe that these languages were spoken by Southern Cushitic agro-pastoralists from Ethiopia, who began migrating southward into the Great Rift Valley in the third millennium BC.

Proto-Afroasiatic (PAA), also known as Proto-Hamito-Semitic, Proto-Semito-Hamitic, and Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars to have been spoken as a single language around 12,000 to 18,000 years ago, that is, between 16,000 and 10,000 BC. Although no consensus exists as to the location of the Afroasiatic homeland, the putative homeland of Proto-Afroasiatic speakers, the majority of scholars agree that it was located within a region of Northeast Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Chadic languages</span> Afro-Asiatic language branch of West Africa

The West Chadic languages of the Afro-Asiatic family are spoken principally in Niger and Nigeria. They include Hausa, the most populous Chadic language and a major language of West Africa.

The Aroid or Ari-Banna languages possibly belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Bauchi languages</span> Chadic language family sub-branch

The South Bauchi languages are a branch of West Chadic languages that are spoken in Bauchi State and Plateau State, Nigeria.

Proto-Berber or Proto-Libyan is the reconstructed proto-language from which the modern Berber languages descend. Proto-Berber was an Afroasiatic language, and thus its descendant Berber languages are cousins to the Egyptian language, Cushitic languages, Semitic languages, Chadic languages, and the Omotic languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Afroasiatic homeland</span> Hypothetical linguistic homeland of the Proto-Afroasiatic language

The Proto-Afroasiatic homeland is the hypothetical place where speakers of the Proto-Afroasiatic language lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before this original language dispersed geographically and divided into separate distinct languages. Afroasiatic languages are today mostly distributed in parts of Africa, and Western Asia.

Shemya is the language of the Sinyar people. It is a Central Sudanic language spoken in Chad and formerly in Darfur, Sudan. It is variously spelled Shamya, Shamyan, Shemya, Sinya, and known as Symiarta, Taar Shamyan, Zimirra.

Polci is an Afro-Asiatic language of Bauchi State, Nigeria. It is part of the Barawa cluster, which is in turn part of the West Chadic language family.

Herrmann Rudolf Jungraithmayr is an Austrian Africanist and retired university professor. Until 1996, he was the chair of African linguistics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Proto-Niger–Congo is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language of the proposed Niger–Congo language family.

References

  1. "Chadic Languages; Ethnologue".
  2. Blench, 2006. The Afro-Asiatic Languages: Classification and Reference List Archived 2013-10-07 at the Wayback Machine (ms)
  3. Blench, Roger. 2008. Links between Cushitic, Omotic, Chadic and the position of Kujarge Archived 2019-12-22 at the Wayback Machine . 5th International Conference of Cushitic and Omotic languages.
  4. Ehret, Christopher (5 December 2006). "The Nilo-Saharan background of Chadic". Studies in African Linguistics. 35: 56–66. doi: 10.32473/sal.v35i0.107316 . S2CID   195404449.
  5. Blench, Roger. 2012. Linguistic evidence for the chronological stratification of populations South of Lake Chad. Presentation for Mega-Tchad Colloquium in Naples, September 13–15, 2012.
  6. Vossen, Rainer and Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020. The Oxford Handbook of African Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  7. Jungraithmayr, Herrmann; Ibriszimow, Dymitr (1994). Chadic Lexical Roots: Tentative reconstruction, grading, distribution and comments. (Sprache und Oralität in Afrika; 20), volume I, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
  8. Cosper, Ronald. 2015. Hausa dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/220 Archived 2020-01-01 at the Wayback Machine , Accessed on 2019-12-31.)
  9. Blench, Roger. no date. Ron comparative wordlist Archived 2015-04-21 at the Wayback Machine .
  10. Shimizu, Kiyoshi. 1978. The Southern Bauchi group of Chadic languages: a survey report. (Africana Marburgensia: Sonderheft, 2.) Marburg/Lahn: Africana Marburgensia.
  11. Cosper, Ronald. 2015. Polci dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/221 Archived 2020-01-01 at the Wayback Machine , Accessed on 2019-12-31.)
  12. Gravina, Richard. 2014. Proto-Central Chadic Lexicon Archived 2021-01-20 at the Wayback Machine . Webonary.
  13. Shryock, Aaron (June 1997). "The classification of the Masa group of languages". Studies in African Linguistics. 26 (1): 30–62. doi: 10.32473/sal.v26i1.107396 . S2CID   185914860.
  14. Doornbos, Paul. 1981. Field notes on Kujarge, language metadata, 200-word list plus numerals and pronouns.
  15. Ehret, Christopher (1987). "Proto-Cushitic Reconstruction". Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika. 8: 7–180.
  16. Aklilu, Yilma (2003). "Comparative phonology of the Maji languages". Journal of Ethiopian Studies. 36: 59–88.
  17. Kossmann, Maarten. 2009. Tarifiyt Berber vocabulary Archived 2024-05-26 at the Wayback Machine . In: Haspelmath, Martin & Tadmor, Uri (eds.) World Loanword Database. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  18. Kogan, Leonid (2012). "Proto-Semitic Lexicon". In Weninger, Stefan (ed.). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 179–258. ISBN   978-3-11-025158-6.
  19. Ehret, Christopher (1995). Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary. University of California Press. ISBN   0-520-09799-8.